Letter: Cowardly Hamas tactics endanger innocent people

Cowardly Hamas tactics endanger innocent people

Since the beginning of this year alone, 800 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israeli cities, towns, schools, hospitals and playgrounds. As a result, since 2001, a generation of Israeli children has been growing up tethered to bomb shelters, with but 15 seconds to reach safety once the warning sirens sound.

There has been ample time for the world to express its outrage and force an end to this, but the world has been eloquently silent. So, Israel must now do what any nation would under similar circumstances – whatever is necessary to render Hamas and its allies incapable of perpetrating such attacks again.

One needn’t have a crystal ball to predict what is coming. In view of Hamas’ long-standing practice of deliberately placing its artillery close to and within populated areas, it seems inevitable that there will be loss of civilian lives despite Israel’s best efforts to avoid it. The main question yet to be answered is where, as it has in the past, the Hamas leadership will choose to hide itself during the fighting – in a school, in a mosque or in a hospital.